Word: sadr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Because, it seems, the Bush Administration has other fish to fry. The first is Moqtada al-Sadr, whose movement features a defiant nationalism that is traditionally both anti-American and anti-Persian (although Sadrist elements have been willing to accept help from the Iranians in recent years). Under questioning from Hillary Clinton about the Maliki government's recent abortive offensive against Sadr's forces in Basra, Petraeus admitted that U.S. troops would have provided resources and "different actions" for a more carefully planned attack. An intelligence source told me that the operation had been planned for June...
...What could possibly be the rationale for this? Perhaps it is that Sadr's Mahdi Army is the most potent force opposed to long-term U.S. bases in Iraq-and that a permanent presence has been the Bush Administration's true goal in this war. I suspect the central question in Iraq now is not whether things will get better but whether the drive for a long-term, neocolonialist presence will make the situation irretrievably worse...
...think. Many Iraqis hostile to the government take Maliki to be little more than an American stooge. But Petraeus revealed to lawmakers that Maliki went against his advice in launching an attack against the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Maliki's forces were quickly bogged down and bloodied by Sadr's street fighters. That means the Americans may not have the ability to stop the Iraqi government from an even worse strategic blunder in a place where Sunni insurgents might deal a blow, like Diyala Province or Mosul...
...electoral threat posed by the Sadr movement to the main Shi'ite parties in the current government - the Islamic Supreme Council, and Maliki's own Dawa Party - raises the political incentive for the government to take on the Sadrists before October's vote. But the consequences of the confrontation threaten Iraq's stability. "It is possible that the religious authorities could contain this crisis," said Kurdish MP Bukhari Abdallah Khudur. "If they don't, it will only get worse as elections approach...
...Sadr himself, who maintains that the United States is the chief enemy, warned in his Tuesday statement, "If the national benefit requires us to unfreeze our army to achieve our goals, we will do so." And with the increasing incursions of Iraqi and American forces into Sadr City and other Mahdi Army strongholds, the cleric will be under growing pressure to act on that warning...